


Don't Bother to Choose

by polytropic



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/F, hunter!Allison, magic!Lydia, mentions of canonical divorce, season 1 AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-20
Updated: 2012-11-20
Packaged: 2017-11-19 02:59:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/568312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/polytropic/pseuds/polytropic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the most part, Lydia's magic confines itself to things like flashes of the future and a new understanding of the applications of organic chemistry. That is, until her visions take a distinctly werewolf-oriented turn and a new girl arrives at Beacon Hills High. </p>
<p>(An alternate version of the beginning of Season 1, with some key details of Lydia's and Allison's pasts changed around).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Bother to Choose

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oscillatequrrrly](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=oscillatequrrrly).



> This fic was written for oscillatequrrrly in return for their generous donation to Hurricane Sandy relief efforts, as part of a Team Wolf Cares initiative. 
> 
> The warning for Underage refers to a brief mention of Lydia previously engaging in consensual, heterosexual intercourse. There's also a tiny hint of Stiles/Derek at the end, but I didn't put it in the tags because it really is miniscule.
> 
> Title is from the song "Do You Believe in Magic" by ALY & AJ. Because apparently I am so bad at titles that song lyrics are literally my only recourse.

Lydia recognizes that being the girl saying “everything is explainable by science” while mixing wolfsbane extract with an iron mortar and oak pestle on the night of the waxing gibbous at the crossing of two ley lines might seem a little hypocritical. She maintains the opinion just the same, however, and if certain talkative assistants want to be allowed to assist ever again, they can damn well shut up about it.

“Why is this starting to feel like you’re Batman and I’m Robin?” Stiles whines, but he hoists the flashlight higher without her having to ask.

“Because you’re obsessed with fiction to the exclusion of reality,” Lydia responds absently, shaking the ground wolfsbane into a container and sealing it carefully. She labels it neatly with its scientific name and sample number, tucks it into her bag, and strips off her surgical gloves. This is her last pair, which may turn out to be a problem when handling toxic substances. “We need more of these. Get your dealer to steal you some tomorrow, will you?”

“First, that’s mean, you’re mean, and I don’t know why I hang out with you. Second, Scott can’t keep taking his mom’s gloves, she’s gonna notice eventually and I know it’s somehow going to lead to searching questions about his—our—sex life. That we’re not even having.”

As he talks he helps her clean up the equipment and return it all to the bag at her side. It’s a well-practiced routine at this point; they’ve followed the same process for the last three weeks. Lydia looks down at the bag, almost full now with rows of ground plants, and sighs. Stiles follows her gaze and makes one of his ridiculous faces.

“You’re _sure_ we should be loading for werewolves?”

“If you can find a better interpretation of a full moon, howling, teeth, and your best friend bleeding on the ground, feel free.”

Stiles flinches at the mention of Scott. “And your dreams always come true?”

“One way or another.” Stiles doesn’t get to know about the time she dreamed of someone cutting out her lungs and woke up to her parents getting a divorce. It’s a fairly obvious metaphor in any case. Her precognitive subconscious should be ashamed of itself.

Stiles hefts the bag onto his shoulder—look, Lydia is a woman who has ownership over her body and her femininity, and as a result she can admit that lifting heavy bags is not part of her extremely impressive skill set—and they set off back towards her car. The leaves rustle under their feet, and Lydia once again wishes that there were some kind of overlap between cute shoes, and shoes suitable for tramping around forests in the dead of night. It seems like a tap-able market to her.

“Hey, so.” Lydia glances over her shoulder at Stiles, impatient and eager to get out of the woods, only to find him fidgeting the way he does when he’s saying something he’s been thinking about for a while. “School starts in three days.”

“Well spotted. It’s almost like you have access to calendars.” Lydia feels a little rush of satisfaction when Stiles correctly interprets that as ‘I’m cold and my feet are getting damp, say whatever you have to say on the move.’ He’s very well-trained.

“So I was wondering if. Maybe, possibly, you might be interested in…not pretending I don’t exist? Like, possibly even letting me talk to you during school hours?” He squinches his eyes shut as if he expects her to hit him. Rude. Lydia never resorts to physical violence.

“Obviously.”

“I just think it would be nice if I didn’t have to go all ninja just to—wait. What?”

“Really Stiles.” They’re at the car now; Lydia unlocks the trunk and motions for Stiles to stow the bag. “I was ignoring you because if we hung out too much freshman year, everyone would think we were together and I’d never get another date. This is sophomore year, it’s a whole other equation. Please try to keep up.”

“Cool.” Stiles grins, wide and goofy, and almost drops the bag into the trunk and breaks all of her vials before Lydia stops him with a furious glare.

~~~

The magic started when Lydia was twelve. The obvious conclusion to draw from that is that it’s somehow tied to puberty, possibly an offshoot of changed metabolic processes, or even an activated gene. There are two problems with this theory, however: first, Lydia was a late bloomer and didn’t start puberty until she was almost fourteen. Second, that’s just…not how it feels.

It feels as if her parents splitting up split her, too, left one half of her back in middle school pretending not to enjoy algebra and sent the other half free-wheeling out into space, somewhere, anywhere, as long as it wasn’t sitting at that fucking cherrywood dinner table trying not to so much as breathe for fear of touching off the powder keg. As if the slow-motion explosive fracture of her family shook Lydia loose just a little bit from the realm of nice and normal.

Rationally, she knows that isn’t true. Not every child of divorce sees werewolves in their dreams and omens in biology lab dissection projects. But that’s how it feels, sometimes. 

It’s isn’t awful all the time. Sure, sometimes she screams into her bathroom mirror because of the fractured pictures her faces forms in the steaming glass, but she cured her mother’s migraines with an infusion of feverfew, valerian, and crushed up caffeine pills. That was pretty satisfying. She loves being able to do that, take deadly and dangerous things and put them together in a way that makes them healers too.

So far, the magic—she doesn’t like calling it that, it feels inextricably tied to things like Harry Potter and Lydia wants none of that martyr/messiah bullshit thank you very much—so, the strange part of her, Other Lydia, has confined itself to things like flashes of the future and a new understanding of the applications of organic chemistry. That is, until the first day of sophomore year.

It starts in Computers class—which is the most boring class ever invented, Lydia knows how to use Microsoft Word and therefore apparently has rendered the entire first month of teaching useless in one fell stroke of _non-incompetence_ —when Stiles plops down next to her as if he’s expecting her to tell him he can’t sit there. That boy has self-esteem issues, Lydia should look into doing something about that if only because they make her feel awkward by proximity.

“Scott asked the new girl out in second period.”

“He moves fast.” Lydia hadn’t even known who Scott McCall was before she started seeing him broken and bloody in her dreams nine months ago. Five minutes on Facebook had led her to Stiles as his best friend, something had sparked in the base of her skull when she’d seen Stiles’ name, and she’d known he was the one she was supposed to talk to. And here they were, still trying to keep McCall safe from a threat that hadn’t even had the courtesy to materialize.

“She said she’s too busy with extracurriculars to date. He’s been moping ever since.”

“Dating _is_ an extracurricular.” Speaking of which, Lydia needs to find a new boyfriend.

“Apparently she’s really into sports. Junior Olympics-level in…something. Fencing? Scott said it was badass but I think he got sidetracked at that point. She said a boyfriend would take up too much time and energy.”

“I call that very sensible of her,” Lydia agrees, a little viciously (there are some lingering bad feelings regarding Jackson, she’s mature enough to admit that). Something nudges at her, a little bit like her Stiles-sense, but instead of firecrackers along her cervical vertebra this feels like something is twitching and stirring in her extremities, a burgeoning awakening in her basilic and cephalic veins. Something is important here. “I like this girl, you should introduce us.”

“I don’t know her.”

The feeling fades. Lydia doesn’t bother being disappointed; she knows it will come back. “Don’t care, bored of this topic. Show me how to make an animated gif?” She flutters her eyelashes just to see Stiles struggle to figure out if he’s annoyed or charmed. He knows she already knows how, too, but him ‘teaching’ her will get them both good grades in the class so where’s the harm, really.

Later Lydia will reflect that the school cafeteria is the most unglamorous place possible in which to have life-changing events occur. When it actually happens, however, she’s less concerned about her surroundings and more concerned with how she steps into line at the register, gets one glimpse of shining dark hair, and then feels a massive surge inside her, an upheaval of such unprecedented magnitude that she almost drops her lunch tray.

Out of nowhere a pale hand swoops down and catches it, the movement sure and almost frighteningly fast. Lydia freezes, and very, very slowly raises her head.

It’s the new girl. Their school doesn’t have enough students for Lydia not to have noticed this girl before, so it’s the new girl, and she’s…she’s. She’s pale, with rich dark hair and large dark eyes. Her face looks like it was built to be sweet, heart-shaped and delicate-boned, but she is staring at Lydia with an intensity that transforms it into something feral.

She looks dangerous. Lydia may have accidentally found the werewolf, and she has wolfsbane in her backpack but right now that seems very far away. They’re still holding her lunch tray together, frozen in place, and Lydia’s hand looks tiny and impossibly delicate next to this girl’s. Lydia feels fragile, breakable, prey. Pretty much the worst thing one can feel when faced with a probable supernatural predator.

_Do not panic, do not panic!_ Lydia orders herself, sharply. She does have…Stiles calls them “cantrips,” quick little things she can do without too much preparation. Unfortunately, she’s never actually _tested_ most of them, but hell, why not start now.

“ _A fortiori,_ ” she whispers under her breath and it sinks into her like she’s downed a shot of vodka, burning and strong. Her bones feel a little denser, now, her skin less like easily ripped paper. She doesn’t know how well it will hold up against werewolf strength, but she certainly feels a little safer.

The girl is staring at her, something unreadable on her face, and then her hand moves and a glass of water splashes across Lydia’s skirt.

“Oh my god I’m so sorry! Jeez I can’t believe I did that. Here, let me…I’m so sorry, let’s go to the bathroom, I’ll help you clean that up.”

Before Lydia can think of a reason to protest or a way to extricate herself she’s being ushered out of the cafeteria. She could fight and make a scene, but it might not do any good, so instead she just digs a hand into her backpack and clutches one of her wolfsbane packets tightly in her fist. If this werewolf is so determined to get her alone, the best thing Lydia can do is make her regret it.

They don’t make it to the bathroom. Instead the new girl shoves Lydia into an empty classroom and slams her hands into the wall on either side of her head. Lydia isn’t proud of it, but she gasps and shrinks back. She’s not a physical person, she’s never been in a fight, this isn’t how she ever planned for it to go. She tucks her chin down, just in case not baring her throat will help.

“Start talking. You know what I am and you know what I can do to you, you have exactly one minute to convince me that you haven’t broken the Code.”

Okay. On the plus side, the werewolf hasn’t immediately eaten Lydia’s face. On the minus side, she has no idea what the Code is. Ugh, is this going to be a “Harry Potter, you’ve been using magically illegally” situation after all? How utterly disappointing. Lydia knows how the fire in her brain and the rushing in her blood feels, and if someone decided that it could be legislated they’re an idiot. It’s not something you could ever write a Code for.

And oh god, the girl has a knife in her hand. She’s pressed close to Lydia now, in a way that seems trained and practiced: her legs are trapping Lydia’s against the wall, nowhere to kick or run, her body blocks any movement to the left, and to the right there’s the knife, held casually with the tip resting just under Lydia’s ribs. Lydia has possibly stopped breathing.

“You like it?” The girl has noticed Lydia’s terrified gaze fixed on her weapon, and she turns it a little, so Lydia can see the inscription on the side. “Family heirloom. _Nous chassons ceux qui nous chassent_. You know what that means, don’t you?” Her voice is so smooth, so casually menacing, but there’s a bite underneath it. This girl isn’t a cold killer. There’s rage inside of her, and, Lydia suspects, a lot more besides.  

_We hunt those that hunt us_. Wait.

“You’re…you…oh hell, this is incredibly stupid, neither of us are werewolves!”  

“ _Neither_ of us—” The girl takes a step back, then crowds forward again as if she didn’t mean to do it. “That’s cute. Mind games aren’t helping my patience, though.”

“Oh for heaven’s sake.” There’s still a knife to her side but Lydia is swiftly getting exasperated.  What a ridiculous situation, a hunter and a witch both looking for the werewolf and deciding the other one is it. “Look.” She holds up the wolfsbane packet in her hand, rubs her fingers together to make it clear that the residue is all over them.  

The girl takes in the packet, the purple dust all over Lydia’s hands, and the way Lydia isn’t fainting or coughing from absorbing it through her skin. She steps back, just a little bit, but she keeps the knife at Lydia’s side.

“Your eyes glowed, back there. In my experience, that means werewolf or something similar.”

Lydia had no idea her eyes could glow. Have they been doing that the entire time? Has Stiles seen it happen and not told her? She’s going to kill him.

“Spellcasting side-effect,” she says as breezily as she can manage. The girl’s eyes widen and, _finally_ , she lowers the knife.

“You’re a witch.”

“I’m a perceptionally-gifted individual with an interest in interdisciplinary chemistry. And unaffiliated with the Neo-Pagan movement,” Lydia corrects.

The girl didn’t quite parse that, that much is clear, but she isn’t shaken. She’s still searching Lydia’s face, eyes quick and suspicious. Lydia doesn’t like this, usually a couple of sentences in vaguely academic language is enough to get her back in control of a situation but this girl is bringing physical intimidation to bear in a way Lydia’s never had to deal with before. It’s...disconcerting.

“Are you working with the werewolf? You know they’ve killed one person and they aren’t going to stop.”

Lydia is deeply disappointed in her clairvoyance. A death by the creature she’s trying to prepare for is the sort of thing she would really have liked to know about.

“I’m not with them. Do you know how to find them?”

“No.” Finally the girl steps all the way back. Lydia takes a calm, controlled breath and fixes her hair to ensure that her hands aren’t shaking.

“Well, not that all of the menacing and angry questioning wasn’t absolutely charming. But call me old-fashioned, I’m rather a fan of traditional introductions. I’m Lydia, and you are?”

It’s like she flipped a switch. The girl tucks her dark hair behind her ear in a quick, surprisingly nervous motion, and smiles sheepishly. “Allison Argent. I’m sorry, I just…I’m a little new at this.”

God, that’s _adorable_. Lydia is unfairly charmed. “I wouldn’t have guessed it. Top-notch intimidation of werewolf suspect, really. I’ll write you a recommendation.” What is she even _saying_? Lord, she knew Stiles’ speech patterns would infect her eventually, this is why letting him hang out with her was a mistake.

The girl—Allison—laughs. Not a huge laugh, but an honest one, and Lydia feels that motion in her blood again, that twisting stirring something. “That’s…thanks, but it’s a little early to be thinking about Werewolf Hunter College. How about instead you tell me everything you know about the Alpha werewolf?”

Lydia smiles back coyly and tries to make sure nothing in her face is giving away the thought _What the hell is an Alpha werewolf? I have missed something crucial here!_ “How about we compare notes? My house, after school, 5pm. I’ll show you mine, you show me yours.”

At least that line gets a blush out of Allison as reliably as all the guys Lydia has tried it on before. “No offense, but your house isn’t in the perimeter we’ve established and I need my security until we’re more settled in town. My place?”

Lydia shrugs. “Fine. But I’ll have someone checking on me. Not that I don’t trust you.”

“Of course.”

Lydia pulls out her phone and hands it over. Allison raises her eyebrows at the picture on the background—Lydia thinks it’s a particularly flattering photo of herself, there’s no call for that expression—but she taps her number in. “I added my address there too. Five pm. Your info for mine. Deal?”

She holds out her hand, and after a moment, Lydia shakes it. Immediately the feeling in her blood, the one that has been stirring restlessly all day, bursts into growth. It is everywhere, rushing through her, and with sudden clarity Lydia knows what it feels like. It feels like something has taken root inside of her, dormant seeds that she didn’t even know were there, and now twining tendrils are writhing out of her, clinging to this Allison Argent like she’s the sun itself. Something inside of Lydia is in bloom, and it is frankly terrifying.

“Great. See you tonight.” Allison nods once, the movement curt and strangely military, and leaves. Lydia watches her walk away and feels…changed, inside. There are flowers in her blood now, slowly coming to life.

~~~

When Lydia rings Allison’s doorbell that evening, she’s too busy worrying about everything else (Stiles is finally bringing Scott up to speed because they need him to know; Lydia’s mom hasn’t seen her for more than fifteen minutes at a time in the last week and is probably getting ready to try another one of her pathetic attempts at discipline; Lydia’s blood feels thin and electric, full of vines and fire and aching, echoing calls) to really wonder what Allison’s parents might be like.

The answer, as it turns out, is _hot_. The man who opens the door probably has his picture in the dictionary to illustrate the term “silver fox.” Lydia smiles her best smile and thanks her stars that she put on her favourite lip gloss today.

“Mr. Argent, I presume.”

He looks confused. It’s still hot. “Can I help you?”

“Totally. I’m a friend of Allison’s from school, we have plans to hang out today.”

“Do you now.” He smiles, white and wide, and Lydia really wants to snap a picture on her phone so she can send it to Stiles, just to ask whose dad looks like that. Also he’s definitely trying to intimidate her. Who does that to their daughter’s friends? Well, Lydia supposes that when your daughter is a werewolf hunter, the rule for social interaction might be a little different.

“Dad, can you let Lydia in now? She’s gonna think we’re totally weird.”

Allison appears at the top of the stairs. She’s changed out of her school clothes and into darker clothes that look built for exercise and possibly murder. It’s a surprisingly good look; somehow the blatant ‘fuck you’ to femininity is working for her.

“Of course, my apologies. Lydia, go on in. You girls have fun.” Mr. Argent stands aside so Lydia can get in the door. She’s almost to the stairs when he adds, “And Allison?”

“Yeah?”

“Curfew’s at nine tonight.”

“But—“

“Hey. We had an agreement, remember? This is part of it. Nine o’clock.”

Allison’s mouth works for a moment, as if she’s going to argue, but then she just nods instead. “Fine. Lydia, c’mon, this way.”

Lydia is led along a carpeted hallway, liberally cluttered with cardboard boxes. Someone has started hanging photographs on the walls but abandoned the project halfway through.

“Sorry about the mess. And thanks for keeping your cover in front of my father, witches are something I don’t quite know his stance on yet and I’d rather not fight about it without getting all the facts first.”

“Daddy’s little girl,” Lydia comments meaningfully, and Allison snorts, her face shuttered.

“On negotiated terms. We’ve had some…family problems lately. Differences of opinion. All you need to know is that I speak for this family and for the hunters under us.”

Lydia gets flashes of something as Allison speaks: fire, a woman laughing, a short-haired woman and a tall man arguing, _You didn’t marry the Code, Chris, you married me, and that means where I lead you follow!_ Allison and the laughing woman facing off against each other, one with a bow the other with a gun: _Allison, sweetheart, you don’t want to go down this road. Trust me darling, it would make me very sad to lose my favourite niece but if I have to I’ll bury you six feet under._

“You seem pretty young to be in charge of an entire army.”

“Branch. And I was set to succeed my mother when I turned twenty-one anyways; the timeline just had to be moved up a bit when she left.”

Oh, there’s a bitterness Lydia knows well. Parents. They act so overjoyed to have “exceptional” children, as if they don’t realize that all it means is that they’re inevitably going to let them down.

They’re at Allison’s room by this point. It’s pretty bare, clothes in the closet but everything else in boxes. The sign of someone who isn’t ready to commit to staying long.

Lydia seats herself on the bed, because why not. “So. I think you said something about information exchange,” she says bluntly. They don’t exactly have time for foreplay. “This first one is free: it’s a full moon tonight.”

“If that’s the quality of facts I’m going to be getting we might want to call this off now,” Allison says, looking like she can’t decide whether to be annoyed or amused.

Lydia shrugs. “Except, my follow-up is a little more exciting. It’s a full moon tonight, and I had a vision of a kid getting mauled on a full moon that I think is about to come true.”

All of the amusement disappears. Allison grabs her desk chair and drags it over to the bed, sitting down and leaning forward until her eyes are boring into Lydia’s, dark and intense. “Tell me _everything_.”

To her own slight surprise, Lydia does.

When she’s done Allison sits back in her chair, looking a little stunned. “How many varieties of wolfsbane did you say you’d collected, again?”

“At least twenty.”

“God, my dad is gonna freak, we only have twelve.” Allison grins and Lydia can’t help preening a little. She’s good at what she does but it’s always nice to have that confirmed by outside parties. “Okay. So Scott McCall is in danger of getting Bitten, and you’ve been playing it defensively for the past nine months by keeping him inside on the full moons, right?”

“Right.”

“And that hasn’t gotten you anywhere. So I say we start attacking instead. If this Alpha wants McCall so badly, let’s use his clothes as bait to lure the thing out.”

“I can set wolfsbane snares, and I think Stiles has some ideas about rowan branches,” Lydia offers.

“Good. Tonight I just want to get a sense of our defenses and make some plans; can you text McCall and Stiles to meet us at the edge of the preserve? We’ll scout some locations and stay close to the road so the Alpha won’t feel secure enough to attack.”

“All right.” Lydia pulls out her phone. The response from Stiles is almost immediate:

OMFG yes so awesome feel like im on xfiles. or buffy. or both!

“They’ll be there,” she says, and looks up to see Allison slinging an actual _crossbow_ onto her back. There are two knives in her belt and a third in an ankle sheath. Lydia stares.

“Just in case.” Allison pats the bow affectionately. “I’d bring my compound, but I think we need efficiency more than accuracy tonight.”

“Ah. Sure,” Lydia agrees faintly. Sometimes she feels like she’s on equal footing with this girl, but this is not one of those times. “Let’s go, then.”

Lydia turns towards the door only to have Allison catch her wrist. Her movements are so unnaturally fast, and her grip is so disconcertingly strong; Lydia wonders what werewolf abilities must be like, if this is the level humans reach to compete with them.

“Sorry.” Allison drops Lydia’s wrist. The skin there is warm and a little pale in the wake of her fingers, and underneath it her blood sings about growth and hunger. “We can’t go that way, my dad is downstairs and there’s no way he’ll clear this mission.”

“I thought you were in charge.”

“I am. He forgets that, sometimes.”

“So, what, you have a secret passage out of here that doesn’t lead to the front door?”

“Kind of, yes.” Allison crosses to the window, hauls it open, and slings one leg over the sill.

“What are you doing?” Lydia hisses. In actuality it’s pretty obvious what she’s doing, but this is the _second floor_ , so unless she has a ladder—

Allison slides out of her window and onto the sloped roof. She stands poised there for a moment, silhouetted against the full moon, and then jumps, heads over knees over head. Her feet hit the ground two stories below with a solid ‘crunch’; she sticks the landing as if it’s the easiest thing in the world.

Lydia has always had a bit of a thing for guys who are good at sports. She ended (“lost” implies theft and passivity, she refuses to use that kind of disempowering terminology about decisions that she doesn’t at all regret) her virginity with the star keeper of their rival school’s soccer team, and of course Jackson “Lacrosse Captain” Whitmore is a case in point. Her attraction to boys who are physically fit and athletic is something she knows and accepts about herself. She’d just never before thought to wonder if it might possibly apply to girls too.

She should probably start wondering about that, Lydia reflects, as he watches Allison dust herself off and feels a familiar tightening in her stomach and a heat in her cheeks.

“Coming?” Allison asks, teeth flashing wide and bright in the moonlight.

Lydia is not the sort of person who jumps off of roofs. She has never been on a roof in her life, and yesterday would have said that she never intended to be. But somehow she finds herself swinging her feet over the ledge.

“If I break my neck, I have the Sheriff’s son prepared to implicate you in my death,” he hisses down at Allison, whose response is to open her arms.

“I’d better catch you, then.”

“Yes, you had better.” Just in case, though, she mumbles “ _Parato,”_ under her breath, which technically is just supposed to make her feel prepared for whatever is to come but to Lydia has always smelled a little like a luck charm.

And whether it’s the charm or the fact that two stories isn’t actually as high up as it seems, when Lydia jumps she lands on her feet and only wobbles a little before Allison’s arms steady her. Lydia’s breath leaves her in a relived whoosh of air, and she laughs.

On a whim, she curtseys. Allison’s mouth twitches, and she sketches a bow.

“My lady.”

“My knight.”

Allison’s laugh is shocked and a little delighted. “Your _what_?”

“In shining, shining armor,” Lydia tells her gaily, and links their arms together. “Now come on, I’ve got wolfsbane in my pockets and homemade firebombs in my trunk; let’s go kill a werewolf.”

(Later it will turn out that there are two werewolves and only one of them is evil, and only Scott’s insistence on getting Derek Hale’s side of the story stops them from killing the wrong one. Lydia grudgingly admits that McCall’s naiveté might have a useful function to serve. Stiles calls Scott “Captain Diplomacy” for weeks and makes increasingly awful Dungeons and Dragons jokes, but after the colour his face turned the first time Derek took his shirt off, Lydia is fairly certain he’s happy about the outcome as well.

It’s a strange little pack Lydia has managed to acquire, and every time she steps into the woods at night, Allison a silent presence behind her with her bow ready and her eyes watchful, she feels herself slipping a little bit farther away from the girl who remembers to pretend to be confused by what a mol is. Other Lydia inside of her has latched on to this new life and dug her claws in; as far as she is concerned, Beacon Hills belongs to her now, every howling, bloodstained inch of it. Regular Lydia, who is sixteen and is only starting to sort out how she feels about going weak-kneed when Allison smiles, isn’t as sure about that. But that’s okay. She’ll figure things out.)


End file.
